Our Founder

Perry De Fontaine is a CPA with over 30 years of financial services industry experience - including as an executive with major consulting and Wall Street firms (including Moody's, Coopers & Lybrand and Salomon Smith Barney) helping Fortune 500 clients around the world with their financial affairs. However, in the early 2000's he decided that, instead of helping companies, he wanted to "give back" to his community by helping individuals and their families with their finances. Once he began this transition, he discovered that one of the major issues facing students and their parents was the high, and rapidly increasing, cost of college. Furthermore, he was surprised by the lack of readily available information to help families with this problem. Thus began what has become College Insights today.

He believes that no child who wants to go to college should be denied that opportunity because his/her parents do not know how to pay for it. He is confident that whatever your financial situation is, College Insights can show each and every one of you how to make college affordable, opening the doors to colleges you never thought your children could attend.

People routinely ask Perry why he is so passionate about college planning. His response?

"Quite simply, the lack of information about college, and how to pay for it without going broke, has not changed since I went to high school. Because of that, many parents do not think they can afford college at all, students must try to get a college degree "the hard way" or school choices are limited by "sticker price." I did not know how to pay for college and was faced with the reality of not going at all. If I ultimately did not discover the magic of financial aid, who knows if I would have ever finished college by "going the hard way!" I am eternally grateful that I did discover how the system worked, which enabled me to graduate from a great college and go on to a successful career."

Realizing that these issues existed in the early 2000's (and still do today), Perry worked to create effective college planning educational programs and services to guide every family successfully through the college planning process, allowing them to identify schools that are right for their parents' pocketbook.

Perry lives with his family in Millstone Township, NJ. He is a Certified Public Accountant (CPA) as well as a Certified College Planning Specialist (CCPS). He is also securities licensed as well as life and health insurance licensed. In addition, he is a member of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA), the National Institute of Certified College Planners (NICCP), and the National Association of College Admissions Counselors (NACAC). He graduated from Rutgers University in 1981 with a B.S. in Accounting.